A wide variety of repair services are rendered to customers on an as-needed basis, including repair services of the type which are commonly rendered at a customer's place of residence. Some examples of these services include those routinely performed by plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, appliance repair technicians, etc. When determining the price to charge for these services, providers typically employ either one of the following two approaches: a time and materials approach; or a flat rate approach.
According to the time and materials approach to pricing repair services, a service technician must keep track of the amount of time spent on a particular job, which is normally charged to the customer at an hourly rate, taking into account the starting and stopping times of each technician on the job, including perhaps for lunch and other breaks. The service technician must also track the cost of all parts, equipment and other materials which are used in rendering the service (for purposes herein, replacement parts and/or new equipment installation may be considered part of a “service,” when applicable). Thus, in addition to tracking the materials used, the technician must also determine the cost of these materials, typically by referencing a detailed parts catalog. Not only is this a time consuming process, and requires each technician in the field to be equipped with one or more parts catalogs which can be expensive and cumbersome to use, it also frequently results in errors in the calculated price to the disadvantage of the customer or the service provider, or both where such errors result in a dissatisfied customer. Further, the time and materials approach to pricing repair services does not readily lend itself to providing customers with accurate up-front price quotes, as the amount of time required to perform the necessary repairs may be generally unknown until the job is nearly completed. This approach also has a tendency of creating apprehension on the part of many customers as the amount of time spent on the job by the technician increases, with a corresponding increase in the ultimate price for the service.
According to the flat rate approach to pricing repair services, once the particular repair service desired by a customer is known (which is typically determined by the service technician upon diagnosing the equipment in need of repair), the technician can determine a flat rate price for the needed service. This is accomplished by referencing a comprehensive pricing catalog which includes “installed prices” for a wide variety of parts and equipment. For example, such a pricing catalog may specify the installed price of a specific gas control valve for an HVAC system at $200, which represents the costs of the valve itself as well as the cost to install it. However, because these catalogs typically contain pricing information for numerous gas control valves, in addition to a wide variety of other parts and equipment, it is not uncommon for service technicians to make mistakes when trying to price a particular repair service. Further, the pricing catalogs themselves are typically quite expensive, and a separate catalog must typically be purchased for each field technician of a service organization on an annual or biannual basis, or whenever the catalogs are updated to reflect new parts, services and price changes.
In addition to the shortcomings noted above for each approach, the average customer is generally unable to opportunity independently confirm the accuracy of a price quoted for a particular repair service, as the customer usually does not have access to the necessary pricing catalogs and would probably be incapable of using such catalogs even if faced with the quoted by service technicians as suspect, and question at least to themselves whether the quoted price is fair or accurate.